


The Problem of Orthallen: a reconsideration of traditional Valdemaran historiography

by MCM



Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Academic, History, Hobsbawm, Humor, Natalie Zemon Davis, Non-narrative, Spivak, Tax policy, dry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 09:20:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3805084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MCM/pseuds/MCM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An insomnia-induced thought experiment. In which a historian with (perhaps unrealistically high) hopes involving grant funding, publications, and tenure, attempts to complicate the traditional view of Valdemaran history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

Over the last thirty years, examinations of Valdemar's history, while popular, have not kept up with trends in the field. Valdemar's historians have employed, and continue to rely almost entirely upon, a conservative approach to their subject - Valdemar is a geographically tiny kingdom whose existence and growing geopolitical importance are explained through examinations of the deeds and decisions of great individuals. King Valdemar Called the Companions, Queen Elspeth forged a treaty with Iftel, Herald Vanyel sacrificed himself to secure the (notably expanded) borders, King Sendar laid down his life on the battlefield. 

Without doubting the momentous influence of these individuals, it must be noted that the conservative historiographic approach has many shortcomings. While historians' attention has been focused on kings and Heralds (who, it must be noted, belong to a completely overlapping set of circles in the Venn diagram of Valdemaran society) broader historical trends have been overlooked. Further, because of the mystical nature of Companions, historians have often approached Heralds with an almost-religious reverence, at odds with the kingdom's commitment to secular government, producing accounts that are best described as hagiographies. The impacts of this are not merely academic - Valdemar's commitment to supporting its Heralds drives an aggressive national program of tax rebates for service providers - and in some cases even whole villages - that render services and aid to Heralds and their Companions in even the most ordinary of circumstances. The consequences of this are hinted at, but not discussed, in traditional accounts of Herald Talia's Choosing and subsequent journey to Haven from her family's home near the Valdemar-Karse border. Talia was stopped by the Road Guard at Sweetsprings, where, at the urging of the Guard, local business-owners provided Talia with second-hand clothing and a day's supply of meat pies. In return for providing Talia, a future Herald, with goods that were otherwise unwanted, of low monetary value, and in the case of the pies, plainly inadequate for her journey to Haven, the entire village received a 50% tax cut for the year. A few days later, the village of Kettlesmith qualified for a similar tax cut in exchange for providing additional provisions for the final day of Talia's journey. 

The gaps in this simple story highlight the problems of conservative historiography. How did the villagers of Sweetsprings and Kettlesmith produce the goods they gave to Talia? How did they see their tax burden? What was the condition of their children? How were they educated? How did the various laws and decisions, territorial expansions and contractions, Magics and wandering spirits tasked with inhibiting the use of Magics, diseases, and technological developments affect the lives of those villagers? How did they perceive themselves, their leaders, and their Heralds? 

In failing to answer these questions, Valdemar's historians have left the lives of its people shrouded in mystery. Despite dozens of volumes produced over the last thirty years, and the enduring popularity of conservative Valdemaran history as a genre, Valdemar remains an undiscovered country. This is precisely why Lord Orthallen poses such a problem. 

The traditional historical approach to Orthallen has been to see him as young Lady Elspeth did - as a manifestation of pure evil. Herald Dirk attempted to refine Elsepth's thinking by conflating evil with greed. It must be noted that while this famous conversation was casual, it was also explicitly intended to be educational. Dirk's elision of evil and greed reflects a Heraldic bias in which economic production is seen as purposeful and patriotic, but business and financial matters are seen as short-sighted and self-serving. 

In a symbolic discourse where Heralds represent altruism, patriotism, duty, service, ethics, and justice, Lord Orthallen is all too easily seen as the anti-Herald. He becomes a symbol of selfishness, treason, apathy, negligence, immorality, and injustice. And indeed, the essays in this collection will not attempt to apologize for his actions, or to frame him in a heroic light. Rather, they will work to complicate the over-simplified traditional account. Orthallen was an evil person, without doubt, and his actions came close to destroying Valdemar three times over. But Orthallen was not an evil person operating in a vacuum. Rather, he was but one manifestation of Valdemar's historical social, political, and economic trends. 

No single writer can hope to examine the entirety of history, even the history of a small kingdom. It is my humble hope that this collection of essays will highlight some of the areas of Valdemaren history which have been so long neglected and will show the way towards expanding conservative histories of Valdemar through new analytical frameworks. 

Our first concern must be economic. While it is an over-simplification to suggest that all problems are economic problems, it is undeniable that Orthallen exploited Valdemar's economic vulnerabilities. Our attention will then turn to a closer examination of the Valdemaren nobility, and the concerns unique to that class. This will be expanded in the third essay, on diplomacy. Our final essay will use Orthallen's actions to reflect on gender in Valdemaren society.


	2. Chapter 1: An economic analysis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our historian attempts a Marxist analysis, with reference to primary and secondary works. Serious triggers: non-explicit reference to rape. Non-serious triggers: Marxist and Annales historians.

One of the major shortcomings of Valdemaran Studies as a field is certainly its complete lack of interest in economic matters. While it is well-recorded that Valdemarans pay taxes and that tax records are carefully monitored and maintained, very little has been said about the productive economy from which those taxes are taken. 

The existing chronicles of Valdemar reveal a primarily agrarian economy. Peasants toil in the fields, present legal disputes regarding land-ownership, and raise pigs, sheep, and cows. Breeding and training of horses is a pastime, or perhaps a business, for the landed nobility, but ownership of horses, primarily as plow animals, is sufficiently common as to be unremarkable. Valdemar is possessed of a printing district, which implies that its industry is regionally specialized. Mining for gems has, historically, been carried out in some areas. Some of these operations have been associated with human rights abuses, which implies a location remote from the humanitarian and philanthropic interests centered in Haven. Valdemar's urban center enjoys access to quasi-industrial luxuries, like running water, sewage systems, and water heaters, some of which are also available to privileged individuals (or, more commonly, instutions) in rural areas. 

But economic analysis does not concern itself merely with these questions of production, but with the processes, and inequities, of distribution. Although the existing chronicles have given scant attention to the urban poor, we know that Valdemar's cities present the same problems as the urban centers of pre-revolutionary France, of Tatooine, or of King's Landing. Child poverty has been a particularly intractable problem for Valdemar, with devastating examples included in virtually all of the available historical accounts of the kingdom. Herald-Mage Vanyel's lifebonded lover, the Bard Stefen was homeless, begging on the streets, when his talent was recognized and he was all-but kidnapped by the Bardic Collegium. Herald Mags was rescued from slave-like conditions in a mine, and yet somehow felt no reservations about putting another street child on a leash and threatening her with sexual violence in order to obtain the cooperation of her brothers. Herald Skif was forced into criminal acts in his childhood. Herald Neave was sexually abused while working in an inn prior to his Choosing. In Queen Selenay's time, Valdemar faced multiple scandals involving a trade in child slaves. A culture of shame surrounds single motherhood and illegitimate children, to the ultimate detriment of all. 

These problems have persisted despite the existence of a dedicated class of political agents dedicated to ensuring justice and stability. Indeed, their persistence might be a result of the existence of that dedicated class. If Heralds represent justice, then those conditions which Heralds ignore can all too easily be seen as representative of the natural order. It is important to note that these problems are simply beyond the ability of Heralds to ameliorate. Although the exact numbers of Heralds are unknown, between 5 and 20 Herald Trainees are Chosen each year. Once their training is complete, some Heralds are assigned to positions at Court or at the Collegium, some to covert operations or diplomatic missions, and some to messenger relays. The remaining Heralds ride circuits throughout Valdemar, where they face a high mortality rate. Under these conditions, it is difficult to imagine that Valdemar has more than 200 Heralds in the field at any given time. Since the time of Herald Mags, the Heralds have been responsible for insuring the welfare of child workers in industrial settings, and after Herald Talia's spectacular and unprecedented arrival in Haven with no prior knowledge of Companions' Choice, Heralds have been responsible for assessing the education of Valdemar's children. However, it is logistically impossible for such a small number of agents to carry out such massive national projects. 

Why have these problems been permitted to persist? The answer lies in the creation of a Herald-centered cultural hegemony. Valdemar's citizens believe that justice exists, and will available to them upon appeal. Although a relatively small number of Valdemarans have frequent contact with Heralds, large numbers believe that their causes will be heard, and considered fairly, at need. Thus, the vast majority allow themselves to overlook economic inequities in the belief that they themselves will be shielded from them. The unfortunate masses who are forced to confront the bitter truth have no recourse. Rather than uniting with their fellows to foment revolution, however, their lack of faith in Heraldic justice renders them outsiders in even the least-fortunate orders of Valdemaran society. 

How does Lord Orthallen fit into this picture? The existing chronicles do not provide a first-hand account of Orthallen's motives or actions. This unfortunate situation forces historians to work through inferences and employ a great deal of historical imagination. While it is, of course, preferable to work from direct evidence, historians have many times used these methods to produce insightful work. Students who are not yet acquainted with these processes should make every effort to acquaint themselves with Natalie Zemon Davis's essays on the White Witch of Narnia, Gayatri Spivak's Unsettlers - her impressive treatise on subalternity in Middle Earth, and, of course, Eric Hobsbawm's Problems of Darkness, the study of vigilantism in Gotham City that has become a classic in the field. While some of these historians (Davis and Hobsbawm in particular) have focused, as conservative historians do, on individuals, they have done so through the lens of communal problems and shared identities. And it is this lens that we now focus on Lord Orthallen. 

If we follow the logic that identifies those forces that oppose Heralds as evil, as, indeed, many Valdemarans have done, than Orthallen is simply, and inexplicably, evil. However, if we take a step back from this hegemonic perspective, we see that the long-standing structural economic inequities in Valdemar also impose a variety of evils upon Valdemaran society, that Heralds are unable to effectively address. In this context, Orthallen is a manifestation of inequality. His involvement in human trafficking demonstrates both the economic and political aspects of this. In acting as an covert provocateur in the abduction and sale of children, Orthallen profited by exploiting the reproductive labor of Valdemar's subjects, and the physical (and sexual) labor of the enslaved children, whose futures and potential were sold in foreign markets. At the same time, Orthallen exploited the existence of this trade to undermine his political opponents in the Council, who he accused of participating in the trade, or allowing the trade to persist through apathy and indifference. 

That Orthallen was keenly aware of the political inequities in Valdemaran government, there can be no question. Orthallen cultivated close relationships with Valdemar's reigning monarchs and their heirs, at one point encouraging Queen Selenay to consider a marriage with his nephew, Kris. It must be noted that, at the time, Kris was barely into his school years, making the proposed alliance both awkward and unsuitable to the problems at hand. Thus, Orthallen's proposal represents the baldness of his political ambitions. Following young Kris's Choosing and assumption of the rank of Herald, Orthallen attempted to exploit their relationship to influence the Heraldic Circle. 

Despite its inadequacies in addressing socioeconomic inequities, there can also be no doubt that political power in Valdemar lies primarily wih the Heraldic Circle. Though Valdemaran law recognizes unusual situations, such as a regency for a young Heir, in which individuals who have not been Chosen may wield political power on a temporary basis, Choosing by a Companion is a prerequisite for the monarchy. Valdemar's monarchs are advised by a Council which votes on a variety of matters, but in the case of conflict between the Council and the Heraldic Circle, the power of non-Herald members of the Council becomes a legal fiction - the Monarch and the Monarch's Own Herald can override the entire Council by voting together. 

The resulting difficulties in reforming the Heraldic Circle or distributing Heraldic power to other institutions must surely have frustrated far more altruistic souls than Orthallen. It is important to note that Orthallen never appeared to be concerned with the problems of the oppressed proletariat. Indeed, he has often been accused of sacrificing his own nephew on the altar of his ambitions. Although Orthallen's ambitions were self-serving, his efforts to reject the limitations on his personal power and his exploitative methods both found their origin in the political and economic inequality inherent in the Valdemaran sociopolitical milieu.


End file.
